The Power of Promotion and tips from today’s album sales

Trent from TheLavaLizard.com wrote a very insightful article about how important it is for artists to create a strong promotional platform. Though the major focus is R&B albums, and current mainstream artists, the same tactics can be used across any genre, in any marketing tactics, at many different levels of the game. Take a look at a few of my favorite passages that I felt would be useful for someone preparing to launch a product or brand in 2013.

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If R&B artists artists hope to have a fighting chance on the charts then there are several key steps that their teams need to understand. Namely, successful promotion involves choosing the right singles, proper timing, consistency and location.

An artist may have the best album of the year but people won’t want to hear it if they are bombarded with all the wrong singles. The songs that are issued to radio to support a project need to be clear representations of what consumers should expect to hear when they buy the full album. In fact, in addition to memorable music videos and visuals, the singles are used as the most basic forms of promotion and one bad song can ruin an entire campaign.

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Still, even if artists pick the best singles, they still rely proper timing. Specifically, performers need to release those songs to radio and iTunes at scheduled intervals so that their fans will be aware that there are new albums on the way as well as select tracks available on the purchase.

Of course, acts need to ensure that their singles aren’t released too far ahead of their albums…

Typically, practical spans include six to eight weeks between radio releases and the first track should debut approximately ten weeks before the full album arrives in stores.

For instance, we all remember the disaster that occurred with Brandy’s ‘Two Eleven’ project where the lead single, ‘Put it Down’, was issued in April, the followup, ‘Wildest Dreams’, arrived in August and the album dropped in October. With such long gaps between singles, people simply lost interest.

At the other extreme, some artists overwhelm their fans by saturating the market with too many singles… most of their audiences become so exhausted by all the new music that they don’t even want to hear the word “fierce” in casual conversation.

Also, it doesn’t matter how well singles are planned if artists fail to stick to their album release schedules. Indeed, if they announce that their albums are due to arrive in May but then get postponed to June then August and finally after Justin Bieber finishes puberty, the only people who will still care will be their mothers and die hard super fans.